Saturday Sparkle: Queen Elizabeth II’s Wedding Bracelet, 1947

Saturday, May 14, 2011

For their 1947 wedding, Prince Philip (now the Duke of Edinburgh) wanted to present his bride (now Queen Elizabeth II) with a fitting token of his affection. Philip’s mother, Princess Andrew of Greece, offered her son the brilliant-cut diamonds from one of her tiaras so that they could be reset into a new piece of jewelry for the woman who would become Queen of England.

Prince Philip commissioned London jeweler Philip Antrobus (of 6 Old Bond Street) to create this magnificent bracelet in a very late-1940’s style. The diamonds are gorgeous in their platinum setting and show that despite his gruff exterior, Prince Philip might just have some of the artistic sensibility demonstrated by Prince Albert in the mid Nineteenth Century.
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